In Forrester’s Customer Experience Index, we ranked 14 banks. The bottom 2 on the list were Citibank and JPMorgan Chase. Wachovia was fourth and Washington Mutual was eighth. If we assume that the acquiring company will set the prevailing tone, then that’s a big loss for customer experience. Making matters worse, the integration of large organizations tends to make people become very internally focussed as they try to merge systems, products, organizations, and processes.

The perception on the part of consumers that the firm does what’s best for its customers, not just the firm’s own bottom line.

It turns out that the customer advocacy ratings across all three groups of financial institutions dropped this year after increasing last year. And the overall rating across financial institutions is at its lowest level in five years. Here are some other highlights of the rankings:

Top five firms: USAA (was also #1 in 2007), Independent financial advisor, Credit unions, AAA, and State Farm.